Pandora

Pandora Pandora Pandora, arguably one of the most famous women to have ever been written into Greek mythology. Overtime, this misunderstood female character has been reduced to a simple eye roll from the modern audience, coupled with a slighted comment about her “box”. Despite the world assuming they know this ancient greek woman, there’s probably a lot within the original text that will surprise our everyday reader about Pandora. For starters, Pandora never had a box, she had a jar. Secondly, she was specifically engineered by the gods as the first female mortal, created by Hephaestus, the god of iron works. Thirdly, her ENTIRE ROLE was to open the damn jar — that’s her only mythological purpose! Pandora is yet another woman people are quick to judge in modern times without fully understanding her origins, so today we’re going to dive into the texts that tell us who she really was.

Hesiod’s “Theogony”

The first time we ever meet Pandora is in Hesiod’s Theogony, which dates to around 700BC. The text is basically an intro to the who’s-who of greek mythology, giving the reader a run down of pretty much every important character we have. We meet Pandora right after the famous myth of Prometheus, a character who took fire from the gods and gave it to the mortals (hopefully this rings a bell). However Zeus, the King of the Gods, is obviously not thrilled about Prometheus betraying him. Therefore Zeus “At once … made an affliction for mankind to set against the fire” (Theogony, line 571), which basically means that he decided to retaliate against the humans in a very snarky way. Literally this is because they now have fire and Zeus doesn’t like that, but realises he can’t now take it away from them. Oh and before you ask: Zeus couldn’t just punish Prometheus because our man was already getting his liver picked out in Tartarus at this point, and this didn’t satisfy the King of the Gods enough. Zeus calls on his son Hephaestus, and instructs the God of Iron Works to create the first mortal woman as a punishment to all the men. This was apparently Zeus’ way of saying Fine? If you want to have fire, have a hot girl too and SHE’LL punish you instead of me!

Before Pandora is given her infamous name, Hesiod actually labels her as “beautiful evil”. The greek words read καλόν κακόν (line 585), suggestive of the duality of her character, being beautiful in appearance but evil in nature. Although we do get told that the other olympian gods help in Pandora’s construction, the real details around this moment pop up in Hesiod’s following work, Works and Days.

Hesiod’s “Works And Days”

Hesiod delves into Pandora’s full story in his text, “Works and Days”. After Zeus calls on his son to make Pandora, we find out that Hephaestus used the natural elements of earth+water to construct her (Works And Days, line 60) . Only after her physical appearance was finalised was her voice added, and then lastly Pandora’s face was designed similar to that of an immortal goddess. Zeus then calls on all the gods to assemble and give the first mortal woman qualities the gods deemed a mortal should have: Athena took the time to teach Pandora crafts, Aphrodite made her even more stunning, and Hermes gave her a more playful/thievish character (lines 60-68). It’s actually Hermes who gives her the name “Pandora”, a word that directly translates to “all-gift” (lines 80-81). Considering all the gods had given her some sort of present to contribute to Pandora’s character, this was a pretty logical name and required absolutely zero thought or creativity.

Zeus then has Hermes bring Pandora to Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus — which means “Afterthought” so you can tell this won’t go well — who accepts the woman as a gift. This is despite Prometheus frequently telling him to not accept gifts from Zeus under any circumstance (line 85-87)… but literally as soon as a pretty girl is placed in front of Epimetheus, he just seems to forget this warning? Pandora shows up at Epimetheus’ door step with a jar — not a box — which is filled with all the evils Zeus could muster up (line 94). The “pithos” contains every icky thing you can imagine, including elements like disease and suffering among many others. Long story short, Pandora opens the jar “bearing all the evils to mortals in silence” (line 104), but manages to keep “hope” trapped inside. The mention of “silence”, by the way, means that these evils were specifically designed to remain silent whilst wreaking havoc among the mortals as a way to make them more frightening.

… And that’s the real mythology of Pandora. Hesiod never details the moral implications of Pandora’s actions in his texts; in fact, deciding what Pandora did was the worst thing ever is simply something modern audiences have imposed on the ancient tale. We need to consider that Pandora’s whole job was to let out the evils into the world, and many classicists have used this knowledge to springboard into their own suggestions of how Hesiod wanted her character to be interpreted. Where some do still believe the ancients would have widely condemned her, others have suggested that the act of Pandora holding onto “hope” was really the important takeaway from Hesiod's story. A commonly taught conclusion of the myth is that Hesiod was saying that “hope” is the only antidote for suffering … but at the end of the day, we can’t be certain.

For more information on Pandora, you can check out the following sources:
Hesiod’s Theogony , Works and Days (using both the Loeb Classical Library and the Oxford World’s Classics)